Having never persuaded Republicans that ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would be a good idea, President Barack Obama intends to press for a U.N. Security Council resolution urging the permanent global halt to explosive nuclear weapons testing, according to news reports this week.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Obama would seek the resolution next month, at the 20th anniversary of the accord, which has not yet entered into force. The Wall Street Journal editorial page indicated the resolution would go beyond calling for an end to testing and actually ban the practice.
In his widely noted 2009 speech in Prague, Obama cited U.S. ratification of the CTBT as one of his top nuclear nonproliferation objectives. Administration officials for years said they were working to inform the Senate and the public on the benefits of the treaty – led by preventing additional nations from conducting testing that would be crucial in developing nuclear arsenals – and assure them that the U.S. nuclear deterrent would remain viable in the absence of future testing. Republican lawmakers have remained skeptical on both counts.
The United States has maintained a voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive trials since the George H.W. Bush administration, but the Senate rejected CTBT ratification in 1999. The Obama administration never formally put the treaty before the upper chamber for consideration.
The CTBT must be ratified by eight holdouts among the 44 “Annex 2” nations – China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United States – before it can enter into force.
In its waning months, the administration still hopes for Senate action on the accord, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told the Post. Meanwhile, Obama is “looking at possible action in the UN Security Council that would call on states not to test and support the CTBT’s objectives. We will continue to explore ways to protect the Senate’s constitutional role,” Price said.
That did not sit well with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “This is a plan to cede the Senate’s constitutional role to the U.N. It’s dangerous and it’s offensive,” he told the newspaper.
Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith countered in a blog post Thursday that Congress has given the U.S. president “unqualified authority to cast votes in the U.N. Security Council.”
“So this once again seems like a situation where President Obama is taking advantage of congressional non-action on one front (the refusal to Consent to the CTBT) and congressional delegation on another front (authority to vote in the U.N. Security Council) to achieve an international goal that many and perhaps most in Congress do not like,” he wrote. “Once again, Congress seems defeated by its own delegation.”
Obama’s reported plans drew quick support from the arms control community.
“It is our understanding that the initiative being pursued by the administration would, as other UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions have already done several times before, exhort those states that have not yet ratified the CTBT to do so and call upon all states to refrain from further nuclear testing and to support ongoing efforts to maintain the monitoring system established to detect and deter clandestine nuclear testing,” Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball said in a prepared statement.
There have also been unconfirmed reports in recent weeks that Obama is considering changing U.S. policy that allows for first use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances.
